According to Voice of America, the annual rate of HIV infections is down from the peak 3.3 million in 1997, and the yearly deaths from HIV/AIDS have dropped from a high of 1.8 million per year to 1.2 million, according to the new Global Burden of Disease 2015 study.
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He spoke Wednesday at a global AIDS conference in South Africa that has also attracted philanthropist Bill Gates, actress Charlize Theron and Britain’s Prince Harry.
“We stand with and for LGBT people everywhere who are too often forced into the shadows and lack access to HIV services”, added Ambassador Deborah L. Birx, M.D., U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and U.S. Special Representative for Global Health Diplomacy.
Harry’s charity Sentebale already focuses on supporting HIV positive young people in the African nation of Lesotho, but the Prince now aims to spread the message to his generation that the fight against HIV/Aids has not yet been won, Kensington Palace has said.
There is much more work to do, though – there are still many children born with HIV and who feel disenfranchised, he said, and ignoring them may mean the “great work” in the last decades will have “come to nothing”.
At the time of the first International AIDS conference, HIV was a death sentence.
“Establishing The LGBT Fund between EJAF and PEPFAR is something we’ve worked towards for a long time in our attempts to make a real and lasting difference in HIV awareness, education and prevention”.
“We can not lose a sense of urgency, because despite all the progress we have made, HIV remains among the most pressing and urgent of global challenges – 1.1m people died of AIDS and 2.1m were infected previous year alone”.
“The vaccine work that we do is to prevent HIV infection from happening in people who are negative”, she said.
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In 2014 nearly 85,500 people were undergoing HIV treatment and care, more than double the number (41,157) in 2004, and a 5 per cent increase on 2013. Dr Wang warned that at this rate, achieving the 90-90-90 goals – aim for 90 per cent of people living with HIV knowing their HIV status, 90 per cent of people diagnosed with HIV receiving antiretroviral therapy, and 90 per cent of people receiving antiretroviral therapy experiencing viral suppression – by 2020 was a distant reality.
